An open letter to:
Rob Brown
The Skeena Angler,
Dear Rob:
I enjoyed your Nov. 23, 2016 column ‘Surface 3’ and the explanation of ‘The Big Daddy’ fly.
I devised this fly in the mid-1980s for use on Washington’s Wenatchee River summer-run.
It was a great place to learn how to fish a surface fly. There were thousands of hatchery steelhead (15-20 hook ups a day were not unusual) and a large population of October caddis.
The fish were very surface oriented. On my first visit to Skeena country in 1987, I used this fly on the Bulkley with great success.
Since the fly so closely mimicked ovi-depositing October caddis, I reasoned that a smaller version would be effective for trout so I tied some up on #12 trout hooks and first used them on Montana’s Big Horn river at dusk.
The trout loved it and you had better be using at least 4X leader to prevent break-off on takes. I also used it with great success on Austria’s Traun River and Yugoslavia’s Gachka River.
It remains my ‘go to’ fly from late spring through late fall for steelhead.
Pete Soverel,
Edmonds, Washington
